"But how did the party come out?" probed Sagner, going deeper and deeper.
The girl sobered instantly. "There were seven of us," she said, "and we all were to meet at the house of one of the girls at twelve o'clock and compare experiences. Three of us came home at ten o'clock—crying. And four of us didn't turn up till half-past one—laughing. But the ones who came home crying were the only ones who really had any fun out of it. The game was altogether too easy—that was the trouble with it. But the four who came home laughing had been bored to death with their un-successes."
"Which lot were you in?" cried Sagner.
She shook her head. "I won't tell you," she whispered.
With almost startling pluck she jumped up suddenly and switched the electric light full blast into her tense young face and across her resolute shoulders.
"Look at me!" she cried. "Look at me! As long as men are men—what have I that can possibly, possibly compete with a girl like 'Little Sister'? Can I climb up into a man's face every time I want to speak to him? Can I pat a man's shoulder every time he passes me in a room? Can I hold out my quivering white hand and act perfectly helpless in a man's presence every time that I want to step into a carriage, or out of a chair? Can I cry and grieve and mope into a man's arms at a dance just because I happen to cut my finger on the sharp edge of my dance-order? Bah! If a new man came to town and made not one single man-friend but called all of us girls by our first names the second time he saw us, and rolled his eyes at us, and fluttered his hands, you people would call him the biggest fool in Christendom—but you flock by the dozens and the hundreds and the millions every evening to see 'Little Sister.' And great, grown-up, middle-aged boys like you, Bertus Sagner, flock twice in the same evening!"
With astounding irrelevance Sagner burst out laughing. "Why, Madge," he cried, "you're perfectly superb when you're mad. Keep it up. Keep it up. I didn't know you had it in you! Why, you dear, gorgeous girl—why aren't you married?"
Like a scarlet lightning-bolt spiked with two-edged knives the red wrath of the girl descended then and there on Sagner's ugly head. With her heaving young shoulders braced like a frenzied creature at bay, against a great, silly, towering tier of "Latest Novels," she hurled her flaming, irrevocable answer crash-bang into Sagner's astonished, impertinent face.
"You want to know why I'm not married?" she cried. "You want to know why I'm not married? Well, I'll tell you—why—I'm—not married, Bertus Sagner, and I'll use yourself for an illustration—for when I do come to marry, it is written in the stars that I must of necessity marry your kind, a mature, cool, calculating, emotionally-tamed man, a man of brain as well as brawn, a man of fame if not of fortune, a man bred intellectually, morally, socially, into the same wonderfully keen, thinky corner of the world where I was born—nothing but a woman.
"For four years, Bertus Sagner, ever since I was nineteen years old, people have come stumbling over each other at college receptions to stare at me because I am 'the girl that Bertus Sagner, the big biologist, is almost in love with.' And you are 'almost' in love with me, Bertus Sagner. You can't deny it! And what is more, you will stay 'almost' in love with me till our pulses run down like clocks, and our eyes burn out like lamps, and the Real Night comes. If I remain here in this town, even when I am middle-aged—people will come and stare at me—because of you. And when I am old, and you are gone—altogether, people will still be talking about it. 'Almost in love' with me. Yes, Bertus Sagner, but if next time you came to see me, I should even so much as dally for a second on the arm of your chair, and slip my hand just a little bit tremulously into yours, and brush my lips like the ghost of a butterfly's wing across your love-starved face, you would probably find out then and there in one great, blinding, tingling, crunching flash that you love me now! But I don't want you, Bertus Sagner, nor any other man, at that price. The man who was made for me will love me first and get his petting afterward. There! Do you understand now?"